It is all a matter of perspective and therefore highly subjective. There are many excellent versions of the Goldberg Variations available. You will find below a sample of Arias played by different artists. Deriving from this Aria are thirty Variations, which are all played based on the bass line of the Aria and not its melody. Bach happened to be the music teacher of the young Goldberg and was requested by the Count to write some harpsichords pieces for Goldberg to play whenever he could not sleep and produced the Variations based on this request.Īlthough there are no tangible evidences to corroborate this story, the fact is that Bach produced with the Goldberg Variations a masterpiece more relevant than ever 275 years after it was created.Īt the center of this work is an Aria, which in the 18th century context represented a slow piece of instrumental music used for dancing and for variations. A 19th century biographer of Bach, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, reported that Bach wrote them for the Count Keyserling who suffered from insomnia and who had hired a fourteen year-old boy, Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, to play for him during his sleepless nights. Johann Sebastien Bach mastered several instruments including the violin and viola, but above all the harpsichord and organ. A uniquely gifted musician, he combined outstanding performing virtuosity with. These are among Bach’s most popular keyboard works GeruBach. This collection of 24 pairs of preludes and fugues is an excellent introduction to Bach’s style GeruBach. A magnificent baroque-era composer, Johann Sebastian Bach is revered through the ages for his work's musical complexities and stylistic innovations. The circumstances surrounding the actual creation of the Goldberg Variations are rather speculative. Johann Sebastian Bach holds a singular position in the history of music. Keyboard compositions (for harpsichord or clavichord, but often played on piano today): The Well-Tempered Clavier (BWV 846-893). Subsequently, Bach who had entered the last decade of his life sat himself to create even more ambitious and experimental works such as the Canonic Variations or the Art of Fugue that still influence the development of music nowadays. The Goldberg Variations, which were published during Bach’s lifetime, were and remained the 18th century’s largest compositional output for harpsichords / piano. The opus numbers are taken from Ernest Warburton 's The Collected Works of Johann Christian Bach.
The Goldberg Variations were the last installment of a four-part suite of keyboard practices called “Clavier Übungen” and marked the end of Bach’s keyboard-writing explorations. Johann Christian Bach, painted in London by Thomas Gainsborough, 1776 (National Portrait Gallery, London) This is a list of compositions by Johann Christian Bach. To date there are over two hundred recorded versions of the Variations. Originally published for harpsichords in 1741, the Goldberg Variations represent a phenomenal achievement in the history of music for its sheer complexity and melodic richness and is a masterpiece ranking amongst today’s most played and celebrated musical works.
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